Saturday, April 3, 2010

Right on cue

As if to support my last post extolling the virtues of Jays ownership committing to spending the dollars necessary to build a winner, today comes news the Jays have locked up lineup cornerstone Adam Lind to a multi-year deal. Boom. Just like that.

(And no, I'm not so delusional as to really believe that. So back off, man.)

I'll spare you the details reported everywhere, but suffice to say the Jays have Lind locked up for a long, long time at a very, very team friendly contract. And this is the point where I'll jump in and throw out a big "c'mon, man....fuck off" at those who wish to poo-poo the value of the deal by arguing that Lind is a one-dimensional player, easily replaceable because of his subpar defence. Oh, really? 30+ HR and a .900+ OPS is easily replaceable? C'mon, man.

The fact of the matter is, Lind really is a one dimensional player. Defensively, his best position is DH. And yeah, he really only has put up one year worthy of the contract he just received. But that's the rub: if Lind was an outstanding defensive player, or if he did have a multi-year history of offensive production replicating '09, there's no way Alex Anthopoulos would have been able to sign Lind to the deal as reported.

Bottom line - the team has a legitimate middle of the order hitter locked up for at least the next four - and as many as the next seven at their choosing - seasons, at a contract that won't prevent them from doing anything. How's that bad? It isn't. It's great.

Other considerations:

(1) Adam Lind, by all accounts, is good people. Yeah yeah yeah. Character counts for nothing, I know. But I'd argue that it does count for at least something when you're talking about a lockerroom leader.

(2) The deal is a strong first step in backing up Nadir Mohamed's proclamation that Rogers is indeed throwing it's hat in the ring to build a long-term winner.

(3) Alex Anthopoulos is really getting quite the rep for orchestrating these long term/club option deals, isn't he? Quick: name two of the best long-term contracts signed (from a team perspective) in recent memory. Whassat? Aaron Hill and Adam Lind? Yeah, that was AA.

(4) Maybe this is fanboy fantasy on my part, but I'd like to think this shows that players want to be Blue Jays and are clearly buying what Mohamed et al are selling. I sure don't think Anthopoulos is lying when he says "There’s a great energy right now about this organization and what we’re doing, the belief that our owners have in us and certainly that the players have”.

....and maybe the best part of this news is that it was completely unexpected. Keep surprising us, Alex.

@ Sp, Lind not a great fielder,OK? He's a DH in the making. Unless you have the proof don't slam on Joey Blowjob, Solo Penis! Yes, True Blue is back!HAHAHAHA.....

A True Blue Jays FanPS The AA man is impressing me. Very shrewd Greek boy. Good with money, conniving, I like him! They didn't spend that much money so job well done. Now if they could hoodwink some stupid team into taking the Pop Out King AKA Wells THEN AA becomes a legendary figure.

Longoria's contract is a great one too, but it covers a different stage of his career than Lind's. The first four years of Lind's contract are pretty good, but the three unbelievably cheap team options on his first three FA years are what make it such a steal.

I just wish there was this kind of commitment to winning from ownership when, you know, they had the best pitcher in baseball.

By the way, remember how good that Rios contract looked the same day as Hill's? Everyone was giddy then too. He was coming off 2 All-star seasons, a HR derby, was a UZR darling and looked like a star for years to come...not so much. Not saying Lind will flop or anything, but they're paying for future performance here after one year and that's why it's so cheap.

SP, they certainly weren't holding any money back in the mid-2000's when they gave JP all the money he wanted to sign guys like Burnett and Ryan to contracts that were pretty huge at the time, and then drop $126 million on Vernon Wells.

I consider those an investment by Rogers rather than a commitment to winning. They had just bought the Skydome for chump change and wanted to squeeze out every dollar of revenue from their assets they could. That might be a cynical take, but notice they didn't at all follow through on that spending commitment; it was assumed that the payroll would keep increasing. At the first sign of failure, they cut the chord and ordered JP to clean house. A real commitment to winning would've been writing off those mistake and spending more to build around Doc. Or spending on draft and int'l circuit. They did none of this until they finally decided to rebuild.

Rogers didn't decide to rebuild, the baseball operations team did. Rogers just gives them money, and in fairness to them, more money probably wouldn't have helped last year's team make the playoffs. That seems consistent with the mantra we keep hearing about Rogers being willing to give them money if it makes sense.

The problem with JP's teams wasn't that they didn't have enough money, it was that many (or most) of his big-money moves didn't work out. He only got one good year out of each of Ryan and Burnett, he gave Frank Thomas and Vernon Wells way too much money, he counted on production from Rios that he didn't get, and so on and so forth. Now, I'm not saying all of those things are JP's fault, because they clearly weren't, but they weren't Rogers' fault either.

The difference this time around is that AA has Rogers' financial support right from the beginning, whereas JP started with a tiny payroll and suddenly found himself with a $100 million, which wasn't consistent with his initial plan as GM. It seems far more likely that they'll be successful this time around, with ownership committing to the plan so early.

Nah, now that you've got him locked up long-term after convincing him and his agents to accept less money in the negotiations because he's "just a DH" - now you go let him try to play in the field so this could turn out as more of a steal.

Great posts this weekend, Ack. You've really brought your A game. I have nothing but praise for the Tao's writing and you've been jr. varsity at times -- although a very strong jr. varsity to say the least, but this weekend I'd say you've outshined even the eponymous one.